[paulgb]

His story is a bit suspicious to me, I believe that he was detained but I can't help wondering if the rest is fiction based on watching US prison dramas. He would not have been sent to a federal prison for one thing, and his depictions of violence are what I would expect from long-term convicted felons, not people being held for having the wrong visa.

[addicted]

The rest doesn’t matter.

No one wants to be detained.

People who are spending thousands and tens of thousands of dollars to travel are fine if they need to spend a few hundreds additional ro fly back and cancel their vacation. Or sucks but it’s in the realm of the risks you take with international travel.

However, being detained, even for 1 day, and treated like a criminal is something none of these folks want.

[belter]

Willing to concede that. But he has thousands of followers and is well known in the MMA comunity. Would he throw all that away for a good story? Also there is an update: "Update on U.S. federal prison detention of MMA coach Renato Subotic who recently trained Merab Dvalishvili"

https://www.sportskeeda.com/mma/news-update-u-s-federal-pris...

"UPDATE: I just spoke with coach Renato Subotic for a few minutes. He says he was detained at FDC Honolulu, which is a federal prison facility. He says he has no criminal record and it was a simple visa application issue. Interview later this week."

[paulgb]

Interesting, I could be wrong then! The inclusion in his story of some very specific irrelevant details (like his cell/block number) while omitting anything that could be verified (like which border crossing and detention facility) was one of the things that raised my suspicion, but if he's sharing specifics now it raises my odds that he's telling the truth.